Tag Archives: managers

Technical Contributors as Managers

Leave a reply

“When did you notice the slowdown in throughput?” Catherine asked. The response from the client was consistent and overwhelming.

“Right after we promoted Duncan to manager.”

“And what was Duncan doing before he was promoted to manager?” she wanted to know.

“Duncan is an engineer. He was doing engineering. Best engineer we have, so we promoted him to Engineering Manager.”

Catherine knew engineers and the worst decision was to make an engineer a manager. She interviewed the team and documented her observations. Her initial report was so precise, so descriptive that it climbed the ladder to the client’s executive team, in charge of engineering integration with every other function in the company. She did not expect the email, but there it was in front of her. “We know we had a small budget for this project, but we want to expand deployment across all teams. What could we expect?”

Priority Conflict Between Two Managers

Leave a reply

“I am getting a service from our accounting department for my project. It’s a big enough project that it has its own budget, so I talked to the accounting manager to see if they could provide five hours a week in project accounting for me,” Roger announced.

“And?” I asked.

“So they assigned Nancy, a junior accountant to do the work. But, the transaction volume in the project is double what we thought, so I really need ten hours per week. I told Nancy and she said she had other work that had to get completed and she could only spend five hours. I told her that was unacceptable.”

“Why was that unacceptable?”

“Well, I am her manager for this project. Isn’t she supposed to do what I tell her?” Roger complained.

“Are you her manager?”

“For this project, yes. She has two managers, her accounting manager for her other work and I am her manager on this project,” he flatly stated.

“And, what if there is a priority conflict in her work between the two of you?”

“She will just have to work a little longer to get it all done. Not my problem.”

“Just to be clear, you expect a junior accountant to make a decision to work overtime, or if she can’t work overtime, to leave some work undone, while she finishes your work?”